Boone husband and wife double on turkey hunt

Hers weighed 21 pounds, his weighed 19.5

Sam Thompson of Boone has taken his wife, Carrie, turkey hunting once or twice a year for some time now, and while they’ve had some close calls, they’ve never been able to get her on a gobbler. That changed this year on April 16 when they each killed nice longbeards on the same hunt.

“I spent some time the evening before watching some turkeys in a field and roosting them. So I knew where I wanted to set up the next morning. And right off the bat, they answered my calls. They gobbled several times before flying down, but when they flew down, they went the wrong way,” said Thompson.

Thompson kept the faith though, and did some calling, finally getting the longbeards to respond. After some time, they noticed two toms coming toward their decoys, and when the dominant one decided it was time to really strut his stuff and try to draw the hens to him, things got really interesting.

“That dominant tom, he hung up about 60 yards away and just decided he was going to fan out and do some strutting right out there. When he did that, the other tom that was with him sprinted straight to our decoy spread. He ran, fast, for several hundred yards,” Thompson said.

Once the running tom got to the decoys, he began strutting, and that’s when Carrie Thompson pulled the trigger on her Remington Versa Max 12-gauge and laid the bird in the dirt at 15 yards. Meanwhile, Sam Thompson had drawn a bead on the other tom, who had moved in a little closer, and gave that gobbler the same fate as his wife’s.

The last 30 minutes of the hunt were a little tough, as the couple heard no gobbling from the turkeys during that time period.

“She was starting to look around and seemed like she was about ready to go, but that’s how it goes when turkey hunting sometimes. You’ve got to have patience, and sometimes when it seems like the birds have lost interest, they’re really just being cautious, but still interested and heading your way,” said Sam Thompson, who plans to make a display that will commemorate the day he and his wife finally doubled up.